Image of Odocoileus virginianus seminolus Goldman & Kellogg 1940

Description:

These are a subspecies of White-tailed Deer. The Everglades population has a key behavioral adaptation: every day, they'll go bed down on high ground in one of those hammocks (clumps of trees) for long enough for their hooves to dry out. These deer were almost wiped out by the 1930s in a misguided attempt to eradicate tick-borne diseases by eradicating the host. The remnant population was so small that it was suffering from inbreeding, so the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission imported deer from elsewhere. The imported deer successfully bred, solving the inbreeding problem -- but they themselves all succumbed to hoof-rot. The above story we learned from the naturalist tour guide on the tram (who was excellent). But I realized afterwards a key implication: the Florida White-tailed Deer are the major prey species of the critically endangered Florida Panther (of which only ~50 remain in the wild), so if that effort in the 1930s had completely extirpated the deer, instead of merely almost completely, the gene for the hoof-drying behavior would have been lost forever, the Everglades would be deer-free -- and the Florida Panther would almost certainly be extinct.